SEEN IN THE DARK

So then he told her how it was about the County Fair, which shortly would open. He told her very gently and kindly how Northvale had been chosen because it was the county seat and how he was powerless to change the plans.

He looked around into her sober face, and sometimes lifted it to his, and at almost every hope-blighting sentence, asked her if she did not understand. He told her all about how county fairs are big things, planned by many men, months and months in advance. And at each pause and each gently asked question she nodded silently, as if it was all quite clear and plausible, but her heart was breaking.

“But I’m not going to forget that good turn I owe you, no, siree,” he added finally as he set her down on the porch, much to Wiggle’s relief. “And I’m coming down the road to pay you a visit n’ look over that refreshment store of yours n’ see if I can’t make some suggestions maybe. Now, what do you say to that?”

Pepsy nodded soberly, her thoughts far away.

“You’ll see me along there,” Mr. Jensen added cheerily, as he patted her little shoulder, “n’ I give you fair warning I’m the champion doughnut eater of Borden County.”

She smiled, still wistfully, and gulped, oh ever so little.

“That’s what I am,” he added with another genial pat. “So now you cheer up and run back home and go to bed n’ don’t you lie awake crying. You tell that little scout feller I’m coming to make you a visit n’ that I usually drink nine glasses of lemonade. Now you run along and get to bed quick.”

“Thanks,” she said, her voice trembling.

So Pepsy took her way silently along the dark road. Her bank had failed, she could do nothing more. This was a strange sequel to follow Pee-wee’s glowing representations about good turns. She did not understand it. And now that she had failed, the catastrophe in the cellar loomed larger, and she saw her nocturnal truancy as a serious thing. What would Aunt Jamsiah think of this? Pepsy had been forbidden to go away from the farm at night, except to weekly prayer meeting.

The crickets sang cheerily as she returned along the dark road, a disconsolate little figure, swinging her lantern. She was weary—weary from exertion and disappointment and foreboding. Her good scout enterprise was suddenly changed into an act of sneaking disobedience. The physical exhaustion which follows nervous strain was upon her now and her little feet lagged in their soaking shoes and once or twice she stumbled with fatigue. For what burden is heavier than a heavy heart? The soothing voices of insect life which soften the darkness and cheer the wayfarer in the countryside seemed only to mock her with their myriad care-free songs. And to make matters worse there suddenly rang in her ears from far over to the west the loud clatter of those loose planks on the old bridge along the highway, as a car sped over it:

Then the noise ceased suddenly, and there was no sound but the calling of a screech-owl somewhere in the intervening woods.

Pepsy sat down on a rock by the roadside partly to rest and partly because she did not want to go home. She knew, or she ought to have known, that Aunt Jamsiah was pretty sure to be lenient about a harmless transgression with so generous a motive. But the warning voice from that unseen bridge disconcerted her. It was not long after she was seated that her head hung down and soon the gentle comforter of sleep came to her and she lay there, pillowing her head on her little thin arm.

But the comforter did not stay long, for Pepsy dreamed a dream. She dreamed that all the people of the village, Simeon Drowser, Nathaniel Knapp, Darius Dragg, the sneering Deadwood Gamely, and even the faithless Arabella Bellison, the school teacher, were pointing fingers a yard long at her and saying, “You have to go back to the big brick building. You have to go back, you have to go back.” On the big doughnut jar in the “refreshment parlor” sat Licorice Stick saying, “You have to go back the next time it thunders.” She shook her fist at Licorice Stick and called him a Smarty and said she would not go back, but they all laughed and sang:

Miss Bellison was the worst of all....

With a sudden start Pepsy sat up on the rock, wide awake,

She still heard.

Her forehead throbbed and her face felt very hot. There was a ringing in her ears. She was feverish, but she did not know that. All she knew was that everybody was against her and that the bridge had put them up to it. She was dizzy and had to put her hand on the rock to steady herself.

The lantern light was extinguished but she did not remember the lantern, or Wiggle. She felt very strange and wanted a drink of water. Her hand trembled and her little arm with which she braced herself against the rock, felt weak. And her head throbbed, throbbed....

Where were all those people? She felt around for them. Then she heard the voice again, far off through the woods, up along that highway. It was just an innocent automobile,

Pepsy rose to her feet with a start, reeled, reached for a tree, and clutched it. “I’ll stop it, I’ll—I’ll make it—it stop—I’ll tear it—I’ll pull them off,” she said. “I—I won’t—go back—I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”

Staggering across the road she entered the woods. Each tree there seemed like two trees. She groped her way among them, dizzy, almost falling. Sometimes the woods seemed to be moving. Perhaps it was by the merest chance that she stumbled into the trail which led through the woods to the highway, ending close to the old bridge.

But once in the familiar path she ran in a kind of frenzy. No doubt the fever gave her a kind of temporary, artificial strength, as indeed it gave her the crazy resolve somehow to still that haunting voice forever. Crazed and reeling she stumbled and ran along, pausing now and again to press her throbbing head, then running on again like one possessed.

At last she came out of the woods suddenly on to the broad, smooth highway. There was the bridge, silent and—no, not dark. For there was a bright spot somewhere underneath it and gray smoke wriggling up through those cracks between the planks. And there, yes, there, crawling away in the darkness was a black figure. A silent, stealthy figure, stealing away.

To the dazed, feverish girl, the figure seemed to have two pairs of arms. She tried to call but could not. Her scream of delirious fright died away into a murmur as she staggered and fell prone upon the ground and knew no more.

But never again—never, never would those cruel planks taunt her with their heartless prediction. Never would they frighten the poor, sensitive, fearful little red-headed orphan girl any more.